Building Better Learning: A Look Inside SERIOUSWORK’s LEGO Serious Play xEducation Training

“Play is our brain’s favourite way of learning.”

- Diane Ackerman

A Brief History of LEGO Serious Play

LEGO Serious Play was conceived in the mid-90’s as a tool to help businesses leverage on the power of play - the same playful principles made LEGO the toy so successful - and use these to help teams build their capacity for collaboration, communication and creative thinking.

I discovered LEGO Serious Play much later - in 2020… mid-pandemic! As a Design and Engineering teacher, I had long used LEGO with my students to bring learning to life. I therefore jumped at the chance to attend an online two-day LEGO Serious Play training course; any excuse for more LEGO in the classroom!!!

Within an hour I was hooked and could see a wealth of opportunities for how this method could add huge value to students’ learning experiences in my setting.

However, I also saw some challenges. The method as I learned it was designed for application in a ‘corporate’ setting - one where teams attended workshops lasting hours, possibly even days. This is a far cry away from most educational settings where timetables are rigid and inflexible.

Furthermore, LEGO Serious Play was introduced to me as a tool to aid facilitation. Whilst educators are undoubtedly facilitators, they can rarely afford to be so stoically neutral in their roles. Where misconceptions in the classroom emerge and are not challenged, they can form part of a learner’s schema - meaning educators are required to actively ‘step in’ to address potentially problematic misunderstandings.

And so, it seemed to me that LEGO Serious Play - for all its potential - was ripe for innovation. So that became my purpose: to take this method, and hack it to work for my context: education.

One monumental career change later, and these formative in-class experiences have resulted in me having authored a book on the use of LEGO Serious Play in Education and designed a learning program specifically for professional educators who are looking to use the method to build better learning for the students in their settings.

If you have made it this far, chances are you know a little bit about the LEGO Serious Play method. If not, please do check out some of my previous articles (or my book!) that will hopefully prove useful.?

The aim of this article is not to explain LEGO Serious play, but rather to give you a sneak peek behind the curtain of my xEducation learning program and help you to understand what makes it the perfect professional development opportunity for innovative educators who are passionate about playful learning.

LEGO Serious Play: Where Practice Meets Pedagogy

A key feature of SERIOUSWORK’s xEducation training is that it digs deep into the pedagogy underpinning the method - far beyond the oft-used broad sweeping statements about constructivist learning theory that are so regularly used to justify the method.

From a ‘science of learning’ perspective, there is SO much more to LEGO Serious Play than just that.

In our training we make use of a series of pedagogy pit stops to explore and understand how the use of story, the continuum of play, decoupling and third point conversations, the five principles of play, dual coding (and much much more!) all contribute to the method’s capacity to turbo charge learning.

Graduates of our xEducation program not only learn HOW to facilitate LEGO Serious Play learning experiences, but also WHY they add such value.

Use Cases: From Classroom to Focus Groups

There is a good reason why LEGO Serious Play training courses typically involve only small groups. These intimate cohorts allow for more tailored and personalised participant feedback - as well as an abundance of opportunities for practice based learning.

However, from an educator’s perspective, there is a tension here. Whilst it is beneficial for us to learn how to use the method with small groups, this does not necessarily reflect the opportunities that we will have with our students at schools or universities.

This is why our xEducation training seeks to offer a range of experiences linked to varying cohort sizes - providing would-be LEGO Serious Play accredited educators with the skills and experience they will need to facilitate learning experiences within their setting and context - be that for eight students or 50.

It is for this reason that we transition between small group and ‘class-sized’ learning activities, offering participants the chance to observe and practise the nuanced skills that they will require to operate in these different contexts.

LEGO Serious Play Hacks for Education: Guardrails and Constraints

Using LEGO Serious Play in education presents us with some unique challenges; challenges that Bart Victor and Johan Roos - the creators of the method - were not faced with. Most notably, time and learner-diversity.

Let’s begin with time. The question that I was obsessed with at the beginning of my LEGO Serious Play journey was ‘how do I take something designed to last two hours minimum, and fit it meaningfully into 20 minutes?’.

Through an iterative approach, I evolved the method to do just that - identifying different use cases, disassembling the process and inventing new techniques - such as Build Level 1.5 - to make the LEGO Serious Play method work for me and the learners in my setting.

In our xEducation training, I not only share these experiences with our participants, I also dedicate time within the training to innovate in real-time, considering how we can further hack and modify the method to make it work for the learners in their specific settings; be they kindergarten or university students.

What Our Graduates Say?

Whilst we are obviously passionate advocates for the quality of our LEGO Serious Play xEducation training, we recognise that our opinion may be somewhat biassed… For this reason, I wanted to share with you the feedback from our graduates (because it is always more satisfying when someone else blows your horn on your behalf!)

“This course opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about how learning can take place”

- Roberta, Cardiff University

“It was a perfect opportunity to have fun and play together for rich and meaningful learning and development”

- La Mor, BIS, Munich

“Whilst I loved the ‘hands-on learning’, it was also beneficial to learn about the relevant research that backs up the theory.”

- Penny, Cheltenham Ladies College

“This experience opened my eyes to the possibility of using LEGO for learning.”

- Early Years Teacher, ESF, Hong Kong

And in case you were wondering how many of our graduates would recommend our xEducation training program to others - 100%

Want to Learn more about LEGO Serious Play for Education?

Are you curious to learn more about SERIOUSWORK’s LEGO Serious Play xEducation training program? If so, please reach out to me directly, or drop me an email at [email protected].

You can also check out this brochure for a deeper dive into the structure of the course - or my book if you are keen to better understand how my work with schools has shaped the instructional design of the program itself.

You can find more information about the scheduled public training offerings here, or contact me regarding in-house training opportunities.

What are you waiting for? Come Play

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